Are Cancer Patients Being Taken Advantage of?

Are cancer patients being taken advantage of? Unfortunately, sometimes yes, but maybe not in the way you're thinking. Recently, we're seeing a new wave of media scrutiny aimed at broadly labeling everything that's not standard of care as alternative medicine, and it's harming people. In fact, there was a Medscape article that was just published, The Promise and Perils of Alternative Cancer Clinics. And this matters because Medscape is one of the most influential medical media platforms in the world, reaching massive audience of Physicians and healthcare professionals and patients all at the same time. Now, while this is going on, we have high-profile wellness personalities that are doing podcasts. They're talking about longevity and health, and they're promoting these integrative cancer clinics in Mexico. And now we're seeing a pushback because conventional care doesn't want people to do alternative care, and they both got it wrong. I don't want to defend everything alternative medicine does, and by no means everything conventional medicine does either. I want to talk about. How you can get the best of both, because some of the criticism in these articles are valid, and some of the treatments described are just not safe. But I also believe it's very important that you know the full story; otherwise, it can be misleading. Real answer: I'm going to summarize it, and I'm go through this here in this podcast—is precision oncology. It's neither alternative medicine or conventional; it is the best targets of both. You're using a thousand plus data markers instead of let's say twelve or twenty. In conventional or some integrative panels that aren't specifically marked to your patient response and outcomes. Or somebody might be trying to bring in a treatment that's unapproved or really may not be a good target for you. And so how do we know? We don't want patients to abandon if they have an early-stage cancer, a simple surgery or a chemo that could potentially work for them. But data matters because a lot of patients with advanced cancers fail care and they need better targeting. And so they're sent home with You know, well, there's nothing left that can be done. And this is why thousands of intelligent cancer patients are looking outside traditional oncology in the first place, because they were told there's nothing, anything else that can be done. They have a stage 4 cancer and they failed care. You know, no patient wants to get on an airplane and fly across the country or thousands of miles, let alone go into a foreign country to get care. And because they know they're missing something, they intuitively know that the big pharma, big hospital, Big chemotherapy model isn't really telling them everything, or their chemotherapy stopped working and they ran out of options. And so I want you to be well equipped. I want you to understand the differences here because there's really nothing else that can be done is not a good answer. You know, after 26 years and our team working with thousands of patients and trying to help so many people with different kinds of cancers, I believe that the data guides. It's data over dogma. The more data you have. That's actionable data that's customized to you, whether conventional, alternative, whatever. You need the right match. And really, that's called precision oncology. That's where it shines. That's what I've spent 26 years building with my team is a personalized medicine precision model. That's a unique ecosystem from testing with our own laboratories, custom drug design in our own pharmacies, delivering it with imaging direct to the tumor, custom building the immune system. I mean, really important combinations, but they're unique for each patient because 2 patients with the same type and stage of cancer will have totally different treatments and outcomes. So important to know the difference here. So more science is better than less. Having the DNA and the RNA transcriptomics, immune profiling, immune spatial biology, understanding the tumor microenvironment, circulating tumor cells makes a difference. And we've seen this in the studies where we're looking at iPredict or WINTER studies. You could see clearly that the more we did testing and matching The better the responses were. Now we took that to an entirely new level with the work we do at Invita, where in our experience we looked at these markers over thousands of data points and combined them. Whether we're talking about conventional alternative, it's the targeted sets that make the difference. That's why I believe the future isn't really alternative medicine or natural medicine or conventional oncology; it's precision oncology. I'm Dr. Dino Prato, and I'm the founder of Invita Medical Centers. For the last 26 years, my team and I have worked to help thousands of cancer patients who failed some of the top cancer centers around the country using precision targeting. And that's made a big difference because a lot of times your big hospitals, your big pharma, your insurance companies, they don't cover integrative care. So oftentimes when these articles come out, they try to hit these pieces hard of trying to say, well, you're taking advantage of a patient. No, patients need better care. And it's an important thing. Now, before you do anything or change anything, make sure you're working with a doctor. And now let's get started. We've seen the studies that attack the use of natural integrative and alternative medicine and try to show that people don't live as long by using that. But that's not necessarily accurate because oftentimes it's neither one or the other. Patients use combinations. But the problem with either conventional and integrative medicine is they're not either precision. You need precision. You need targets. Patients classified as receiving alternative complementary treatments instead of traditional therapy in a lot of these studies had You know, higher mortality rates. And so here's where we need to be careful. I'm not telling cancer patients to reject all conventional care. No, this can have its right targets or to reject alternative medicine. I've been in the field for 26 years. It's the correct combinations that saves lives. That's not what anybody's talking about. So the question isn't, does conventional oncology work? Of course. I mean, you can see early stage cancers where it was removed surgically and there's a high success rate, but there's also those with late stage cancers where it spread and they didn't pick it up because they thought they got it all and it comes back. So what do we do with that? That's why precision oncology helps us because we don't get to miss those things. We get better data or alternative medicine where somebody came in, did high dose vitamin C, ozone therapy, all these integrative treatments in Mexico or wherever they went in the United States. And it didn't work. They still passed away or didn't respond, or maybe they got a little quality of life, but they still didn't have the right targets. That's what I'm talking about here. So what do we want to do is we want to give the patient the right care. And this is an entirely different conversation. It really comes down to technology. That's what really matters here is the testing. This is where I believe the media gets it wrong and it can be misleading. It takes everything and either lumps it into alternative medicine or a giant bucket labeled as conventional medicine or proven care. And that's totally wrong. Alternative medicine is pretty much supportive adjuvant care. And a lot of it isn't always targeted and it isn't always a good match, but it's designed to help with healing, repair, and work alongside targeted treatment, or it can work on its own often if it's targeted. And help a patient, but it's in combination with conventional care. The conventional care model is all lumped in as totally acceptable. This is the way we should go, and yet we have too many people dying of cancer. Can you see this? There's no common sense. But not all alternative approaches are the same. In fact, they're not. Giving somebody an unproven, untargeted treatment that's unmatched—I don't care if it's conventional alternative—it's not going to help them. It's not going to aim towards curative or full remission, or using acupuncture and calling that really you know. Alternative medicine, that's supportive care. So it's really important that we understand the importance of nutrition, metabolic care, integrative medicine, but it has to be matched for the patient. FDA drugs, if they're chemotherapy, off-label, and using the data to guide. And what are we guiding here? The actionable pathways. What's an actionable pathway? When we do thousands of markers, some of these pathways are actionable, meaning we have medicines on, off-label, integrative that can treat them. And they should be custom designed. That's not being done right now at all. It's either you got a drug that's approved or not, or we're trying some integrative agent and hoping for the best without the testing and targeting. So a comprehensive molecular precision oncology approach changes the game. You can't scientifically evaluate all these things as the same thing. And that's where I think the media goes wrong. It's not really alternative versus conventional. It's what your body needs. This makes mainstream media look like puppets, like they're supporting pharmaceutical companies, big hospitals, insurance, because we all know that we have, we know the importance of of artificial intelligence. We know the importance of data. We know the importance of markers, diet, and lifestyle. And yet none of that is really brought forward to people. And it's often called fake news for a reason, because I think they're biased. So, and they can pick these facilities and go after alternative medicine or, you know, people like myself, but not really understand the difference. And that's important. I'm not, you know, trying to be mean to all the media. There's some good media out there, but it's important to know the difference. So here's another point. Even off-label medications can be very important if they're the right targets. Approved can be important. Integrative, alternative. It doesn't really matter what they're called, but it's the right target match and the right combinations. And that's how we take medicine to the next level. So when people hear, oh, that drug isn't FDA approved for that particular cancer, all that means is that in a double-blind placebo clinical trial for population health, meaning everybody with that type of colon cancer was given a drug with maybe 33 to 36% that responded, which is kind of crazy because it doesn't mean they were cured. It just means the tumor shrunk and it could have came back. It's not telling you these people with these exact molecular targets going beyond just like one DNA, but These combined molecular targets, these combined immune profiles, this combined immune spatial biology responded to this regimen. That's powerful because that's how we know the difference. Remember, 2 people with the same type and stage of cancer have totally different markers. And that's why precision oncology is important. That's why that's the future of shutting cancer down, no question. And where we're headed with artificial intelligence, and I'm seeing that every day in our clinical work, it's just getting better and better. And we're publishing, coming out with a new paper, which even shows that patient care is improving even greater. So these are the wrong conversations we're having. They're lumping all these things into one area and attacking it. But really, it's not adequate to use the standard of care one size fits all either, because it doesn't work for everybody. Instead, when you look at an N-of-1 precision oncology where the treatment is built for the individual person, that's what N-of-1 means. Now we're moving to where oncology needs to go. And you know what the problem is? FDA doesn't even have clinical trials for this yet really set up. They just started this year and it's not even close to where it needs to be. They're still stuck in the double-blind placebo random clinical trial, which is population health. It's kind of like Medicare, one size fits all for everybody. But modern-day technology, modern-day information tells us that each cancer is unique and we need to treat it that way. And that's where our patients get a great advantage. This is what I believe is deeply flawed in both the alternative and in the conventional model. So when you see reporting against these facilities, You're not hearing the full story. You're just hearing a bias instead of the actual data, the actual patient, what were the markers and what actually happened. Because that's where we can be honest, learn, and get people well instead of playing politics. We need to get to getting the people the care they need so they can heal. And that's an important distinction. That's the difference. You know, we need to know the data because what often happens is the media will take one patient who didn't have a good response in alternative or outside-the-box medicine who passed away and build their whole case on that, or 2 or 3 patients. Where this happens in conventional oncology all day long. And they'll say one was proven, one wasn't, but they're both wrong because we need to know what failed the patient. What targets failed the patient? What supportive care did they need to get through that care so they could have healed? Those are the right questions. That's what we want to focus on. You know, what was the stage of the cancer, the prognosis, the targets, the immunotherapy targeting? Were they in and out of the hospital dealing with outside complications or comorbidities? These are important things. What treatments did they do before? What conditions did they have prior or alongside the cancer? What's caused the cancer? What are the root causes of the cancer? These are gonna help us help the patient. That's the part that they never tell you in the story because that doesn't make for a good emotional piece, but that's where we need to go in oncology. Think about this. A cancer patient doesn't wake up one morning and go, gee, I wanna fly to the other side of the country or go here to get medical care. I want to stay in my own neighborhood, but they know they need to because they don't feel comfortable where they're at and they know they're missing a lot and it could save their lives. And all of us have been through this with, you know, our parents, grandparents, spouses, loved ones, children. We've all been down this road. And it's kind of important now that we start looking at this technology so people can live instead of die or have a better quality of life. We need to look at the deeper data. We can't just accept conventional and the old double blind. We need, or alternative as it works for everybody. We need to look at the targets because for many common cancers, people don't have the right diagnosis. They don't have the in-depth diagnosis they need to have better long-term success. The disease is metastatic. It's been heavily pretreated, refractory, meaning they tried everything, but now we need to know where the targets are so we can treat them and not do the guesswork. And you would think standard of care does this, but they don't. They look at. Tumor markers, imaging, biopsy, maybe a DNA, and they treat. Double-blind placebo clinical trial, population health protocols. Alternative medicine says, let's do high-dose vitamin C, that's going to help you. Let's do ozone. Let's do all these. But where are the targets? Where are the targets? Because those targets matter. Cancer is unique in each patient and it deserves the matching of the targets. We need to understand the tumor. If you have a primary cancer and then it's a year later, those targets change because the cancers mutate. You don't need population health to see what regimen you need. You need the right targeting. So all you have to do, and this is very helpful, is look at 2 simple studies that kind of led us down this path that were done several years ago. The iPredict, which was looking at DNA and looking for best matches. When they did that, patients responded a lot better. They looked for mutations. They tried to find the right drug for that patient. And that was just standard of care oncology and improved. People did better. And then later on came the Winther study where they used RNA, not just DNA, and those matching scores went up. And guess what? People had better responses. Now today, with the ecosystem that I've been working on with my team, we've taken that to an entirely new level, including immunotherapy targeting, DNA, RNA transcriptomics, how the drugs are going to work, what caused the cancer, and combining that in our ecosystem. And that's where we published in our 2024 paper 35 times better responses. For late-stage cancer patients, where in conventional care they were getting maybe a 4 to 5%, 2% response, let's be generous, because these people already failed chemotherapy. We were seeing 72 to 76% response. And we have another paper coming out in this year that is almost a 500-patient cohort showing those same and even better results because precision oncology in my clinical and our clinical experience works because it's the data over dogma. It's not just guessing. And then what do you do with the data? So you do this data, that's not enough. The data just starts to guide how you're gonna treat, but then you have to custom build the medicines and decide how you're gonna deliver 'em. Some need to go straight to tumor. We use a catheter the size of a hair, go right to the tumor, come out with a bandaid, and not have to give chemo to the rest of the body and build the immune system around that tumor and create an effect around the entire body. Or we can build the body's immune system, natural killer cells, dendritic cells, mingle them with the tumor, give 'em the right targets. And then put them back in, or we can take the right chemo on off-label microdose. There's so much that can be done when we understand each person's DNA, RNA, immune profiling, the tumor heterogeneity, the uniqueness of each cancer, and now targetly treat them. See, it just doesn't make sense that we have these hit pieces where the media decides to just do an article and go against one method or another without totally being honest that we need data, and that's the key going forward. It's this. And we're in the age of artificial intelligence. This data is very powerful. We've built our own artificial intelligence architects at Invitae with spatialomics and immune spatial biology. And we understand whether treatment's going to work or not. We can almost predictively model. And we're getting to the point where it's very exciting where we can help guide care so gently, but so powerfully with real data. It's what we've been doing for so many years and improving on. It's not about conventional alternative. It's what the patient needs. It's the data that guides. You know, we've spent 26 years and working with thousands of patients to really perfect precision oncology. It's its own ecosystem. You know, you need your own laboratories that do this high-level testing. You can't just order them. You need your own pharmacies that custom make the medications. You have to be able to deliver them with image-guided precision. You have to develop these cancer immune protocols that are custom for each patient and then monitor them so you can predict the outcome and make the changes as you need to so you don't wait for imaging. Because by that time, the cancer's already spread. And this gives us the rationale, the safety, all the considerations to incorporate a better treatment plan, target the right treatments, immune system, lifestyle, all the components working to help the patient heal. So the wrong question is, gee, what protocol works for this type of cancer? It's what targeted care is needed for the individual patient. What's driving this specific disease and how can we improve it? How can we targeted care. That's what precision oncology is about. And that's why I'm, I'm, you know, kind of saying today that they're really missing the boat, conventional or alternative. They're missing the boat because it's neither one. It's the combination targets that we see the best care, the best outcomes, the best quality of life tolerance. That's what my 26 years and our team's experience has shown us is that patients do better when they have data, data over dogma and understanding what is driving that cancer. Think about it this way. Imagine you're driving from, let's say, where I'm at right now, Scottsdale, Arizona, all the way to New York City. And the traditional approach can sometimes look like this. Well, you have colon cancer and here's the standard route or the standard treatment plan everybody's gonna use for colon cancer. And that route may be excellent for some patients, but not all. But precision oncology asks a different question. Wait a minute, where are you exactly starting from? Where's the traffic? What are the road closures? What's the weather? Meaning, what are all these markers? Are there any accidents, any resistance, any immune problems? And then building the treatment. Which ones have already failed? How do we get deeper molecular targeting? How do we change the outcomes? How do we help the healthy cells thrive and the cancer cells die and do that in a selective way where the patient can become strong and healthy? How do we stop the resistant clones or the mutations? And how do we build a path to helping this patient go into remission? See, in our 2024 paper, we already started showing 35 times better response rates. In a 200-patient cohort that were all late-stage, mainly refractory to conventional care, meaning they already tried chemo, didn't work. And now we have a 500— I think it's one of the largest precision oncology studies ever done, where when this data is taken into account and treatments are custom-built for patients, we see a big difference in response and a huge difference in what we call patient-reported outcomes and quality of life. The numbers are staggeringly better, but it's because of the data. And I believe that's where oncology is going. And now, you know, with artificial intelligence and the addition of better targeting and custom drug building, I think you're going to get to a point where in the next 3 to 5 years, we're going to see many, many cancers respond even better and even prevention explode because we use the same data to prevent cancers from happening. So this is exciting. This is measurable. It's clinical. It's important. And we need to conduct more of this work, but this is called N of 1. It's each treatment is customly built around each patient. It's not double-blind placebo clinical trial where everybody gets the same thing. And because of that, we need to acknowledge that the FDA does not have yet the right clinical trials for this. They just started N-of-1. They just started working in the area, but in the way that I'm speaking of, they're still behind. And I think that's because big pharma, big hospitals, and big insurance have to figure out how this system will work because that's where it's going. And I'll tell you right now, hospitals don't have this ecosystem. Clinics don't have this ecosystem. It takes a lot of work to build the ecosystem to deliver this kind of care. It doesn't make any sense to me to why somebody would object to more data or information. It makes no sense. Why wouldn't you want more molecular data, more immune data? Why wouldn't you want to build your treatment with this information? It makes no sense at all that people argue instead of letting the data guide care. This isn't even about controversy. It's about in-depth biomarker testing, in-depth immunological testing, and custom treatment planning for each patient. That's what's going to change oncology. That's what we're doing. And it's not even fair because we're playing 4D chess and everybody else is playing checkers. So we're asking the wrong track questions. Is it alternative or conventional? What we need to be asking is, what are the markers? What are the targets? What causes the cancer? How do we treat it? How do we follow up to make sure the patient stays in remission? What are the actual drivers? And then how are the treatment plans built to use all those molecular targets in the right sequence to help the patient? Go into remission and hold remission. And those aren't the questions that are being asked. What's being asked is, well, this is an approved drug by the FDA. It doesn't mean anything. That's only for population health. Or this alternative medicine worked on this group. That's still pop— you know, guesswork. We can get out of the guesswork and we can get into targeting. And perhaps even more importantly, what we want to know is, is the treatment working or not? So we can do that with predictive technology such as adaptive monitoring. So we can take methylation scores, circulating tumor cells, ct-free DNA, and we can tell you whether the patient is responding to care even before the imaging. These are called leading indicators, and we can modify the care to help the patient. Now that's the important thing. Now it's getting better and better. And so the next question that always comes up in these articles is, well, patients are being taken advantage of because they have to pay out of pocket for care. Well, let's talk about one thing. We did actuarial work on our care, third-party data, and we're less than half the care for 35 times more precision. That's why as a center of excellence, we have employer groups that use us to help reduce their costs. And help the quality of life for their patients. Now we're on plans like America's Health, which is a health share where Invita is covered. We're getting better and better for individual families, for employer groups, and the way we're doing that is with data. Now it's great to say well a patient had to come out of pocket, but you know what? We all paid into our Medicare and we don't get to pick where we want to go, and there's something wrong with that. In fact, we had a patient who just put in a bill in Washington called Lose Law. She was an actual patient at Invita who. Fought for Medicare so patients can get care and coverage, and that's still in the long legislative process. But patients recognize they need options, or you pay into your insurance, but you can't decide where you want to go. You're stuck in their world: big pharma, big hospital, big insurance. And though there's a place for it, it can't be dominating, especially when it has less data and it's more expensive. It doesn't make any sense. Patients should have that choice. So at Invita, we work on transparent pricing with our patients. We help them where they're at. We have different care paths for all kinds. of patients depending on, you know, if you're in early disease, late disease, prevention, or, you know, we have all these different models and we're centers of excellence for employers and then, you know, self-funded employer groups to help reduce costs and improve outcomes. And so we're excited about that, but it's important to understand that the system itself is preventing people from accessing this technology. And our job is to change that, is to educate people and help them. So I want you to Not fall into this argument, alternative or conventional. What you need to fall into is data. What's the best model for your cancer? What's the best treatments for you? What are the best targets for you? And based on that, that's when you proceed. You proceed with a doctor who knows what they're doing, datasets that can help you, informed consent, knowing all your costs up front, understanding what's going on. And then with your family, you proceed and get the best care you need to help you. That's the way I think cancer should be approached. That's my experience. I think it's dangerous when you, you lump everything into alternative medicine or conventional, and you expect a lot from either system when neither one of them has the targets. And that's where precision oncology really changes the game. The birth of artificial intelligence and markers and data, it changes it because your cancer is unique to you, and that's what needs to be treated. And you need evidence-supported care based on all those data points, not just one of them. And that's how you change oncology. So I hope you found this episode helpful and encouraging. I know there's a lot to cover there, but it's important because patients deserve options and they deserve the best care. I hope you found this episode helpful and may the Lord bless you on your journey to healing.